Originally published as IGREC Working Paper IGREC-18:2011,
"Cancun Technology Breakthrough Should Deal with a Fatal Flaw Within"
by Dr. Promode Kant, Director, Institute of Green Economy (IGREC), New Delhi, India
January 2011Reprinted with Permission

ABSTRACT

Access to technology for dealing with the consequences of climate change, and for taking a low
emission path for development, is of core concern to the developing countries but has seen little
concrete action over the last two decades. The claimed achievements under CDM in transferring
technologies to the South are, at best, exaggerations. The Cancun Climate Conference has now
agreed on the setting up of a technology executive committee (TEC), climate technology centre and
network (CTCN) and a supporting financial mechanism. The TEC has been constituted on the pattern
of the CDM Executive Board with a six monthly rotational leadership among its 20 expert members.
Such a brief preset leadership, claimed as a matter of right among its nominated members, and
expected to work through consensus, is likely to provide good managerial skills and produce tools of
guidance for assessing technology transfer needs, useful rules of transactions and glossaries of
technical terms but may not be able to achieve the intended technology transfers at any significant
scale. A transformational leadership, and a sufficiently long period, is required to address such an
intractable problem as technology transfer from North to South has proved to be. The main attributes
of a TEC leader should be a fashioning a clear vision and the ability to create a path to that distant
vision, fathoming depths of obstacles, and motivating a large number of countries, institutions and
individuals to walk on that uncertain path. Consensus should be attempted but not made mandatory
as it would restrict transfer benefits to only those technologies that cost the least. The critical task is
to find a leader with proven credentials and give her the mandate, time and the tools.

After many years of slide back on the promises of action on climate change there was only a
mild hope that Cancun would result in some real progress. Over the past several years it had
become quite clear that there was no domestic political space in most large developed
countries, particularly the USA, which would allow them to bear the costs of reducing
greenhouse gas emissions if their fast emerging competitors among the developing
economies were perceived to be having it too easy. At Cancun the central challenge was
getting the emerging economies to come on board the mitigation platform, and the developed
countries to honour their original commitments to transfer technology and provide funds to
enable the developing countries to initiate meaningful steps for adaptation and mitigation.
Discussions at the pre-summit climate meet at Tianjiin had suggested the possibility of a
concrete technology agreement including creation of regional technology centres, and on the
contentious issue of financial assistance in these times of recession, there were hopes of at
least a limited Fast Start Fund for immediate action. As days passed in the noise and din of
the huge gathering at Cancun, hopes began dimming fast till some tactically brilliant
compromises by the President of the Conference, Ms Patricia Espinosa, saw the tables turn.

At the first UNFCCC Conference at Rio in 1992 the world leaders had agreed that mitigation
of climate change, and adaptation to it, would require not merely changing human behaviour but also
the development and use of technologies that would lead to sharply reduced carbon footprints of
human activities. And the developed world was expected to not only invest deeply in such
technologies but also transfer the technologies needed to the developing world and meet the
incremental costs involved to enable them to both benefit from, and contribute to, to an early
attainment of the goals of the UNFCCC.

The UNFCCC also created a Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice
(SBSTA) and charged it with the responsibility to identify innovative, efficient and state-of-the-art
technologies and know-how and promote the development and transfer of such technologies to the
developing countries. And five years later the Kyoto Protocol re-emphasized the role of technological
innovations for dealing with the fast emerging challenge of the climate change, requiring developed
countries to promote research in appropriate technologies and increase the use of new and renewable
forms of energy. The developed countries are also required under the Protocol to take all practicable
steps to ensure access to these technologies, and their management, to the developing countries
through "policies and programmes for the effective transfer of environmentally sound technologies
that are publicly owned or in the public domain and the creation of an enabling environment for the
private sector, to promote and enhance the transfer of, and access to, environmentally sound
technologies".

At the Marrakesh Conference an Expert Group on Technology Transfer was created within
SBSTA and a framework was established for quick, effective and efficient transfer of environmentally
sound technologies (EST). The key features of this framework were assessment of technology needs
and priorities of developing countries, detailed on-time knowledge of the availability of ESTs,
capacity building, creation of an enabling legal, policy and fiscal environment to give and receive
these technologies and diffuse them through various means including private enterprise.
But in spite of all these steps very little has actually happened in technology transfer and
diffusion till today. The CDM is often cited as the one instrument that has led to infusion of mitigation
technologies in developing economies but this is at best an exaggerated claim. In a recent UNFCCC
official study of about 5000 projects in the CDM pipeline in 81 developing countries at the end of
June 2010, as many as 30% project developers claimed technology transfer in their Project Design
Documents. As can be expected, transfers occurred more in specific project types, like the Nitrous
oxide emission reduction in which all projects reported technology transfer, in sharp contrast to
hydroelectric power units where barely one in eight projects felt the need for technological infusion
from outside. Besides these extremes, other notable sectors that merit mention are landfill gas projects
and energy efficiency projects in which 80% and 40% projects, respectively, sought technological
inputs from Annex 1 countries (UNFCCC, 2010a).

Also multilateral and large sized projects were more likely to involve transfer of technology
then unilateral and small sized projects. The proportion of multilateral projects has actually dropped
sharply over the past five years from 30% in 2004 to just about 5% in 2009. This rise in
unilateralism, with projects owned entirely within the host developing countries, is probably linked to
the increasing technological reach of some of the main CDM host countries like China, India, Brazil,
Mexico and Korea (UNFCCC, 2010a).

The UNFCCC report suggests that the involvement of technology transfer may actually be
higher as almost a quarter of the Project Design Documents did not mention technology transfer even
when it was involved (UNFCCC, 2010a). This, however, might be taking too positive a view since,
for want of an accepted definition of technology transfer, often a peripheral use of new technology or
a minor infusion of managerial knowledge, not central to the primary objective of the project, is
claimed as technology transfer just to make the project look attractive.

It, of course, does not mean that technology transfer through purchase of equipment or
knowhow by developing country project proponent could not have taken place. But these transfers are
more like business-as-usual technology acquisitions that would have occurred anyway.

Cases where the technology acquired may have by itself accorded additionality to the project
are the ones which can truly be termed as CDM driven technology transfer. The UNFCCC study did
not examine such cases specifically nor have any other scholars working in this field. But discussions
that this author had with researchers suggest that CDM projects in which the barriers were effectively
crossed through technology transfer were generally limited to HFCs and N2O emission reduction.

Cancun has decided to establish a Technology Mechanism that includes a Technology
Executive Committee (TEC) and a Climate Technology Centre and Network (CTCN). The TEC is to
provide an overview of technology needs and recommend actions to promote technology transfer and
encourage development of technology actions plans and the CTCN is expected to engage stakeholders
in making need assessment and help in diffusion of the technologies transferred. A financial
mechanism is also being set up that will enable these new institutions to function (UNFCCC, 2010b).

The fact that the Expert Group on Technology Transfer (EGTT), set up as a specialized
Group within SBSTA a decade back, did not have widely different mandate from the TEC raises the
question as to whether TEC would also meet the same fate as the many efforts of the past. After all it
is not as if no money has been spent on technology transfer earlier. The GEF alone has spent $ 2.5
billion on this since 1993, and leveraged another $ 15 billion from other sources, for supporting 30
climate friendly technologies across more than 50 developing countries (GEF, 2008). But the results
are yet to show benefits at a scale of significance even after almost two decades since there is no
evidence that these GEF supported pilot projects have led to widespread dispersal of the renewable
energy technologies transferred. Because of its technical, rather than a visionary approach, the GEF
was not able to turn the technical successes of its individual projects into a collective achievement of
the ultimate objectives of technology transfer which is its wide diffusion so that millions may use the
mitigation opportunities now available. The reason for this failure lies not in any wrong doing or
lapses on the part of the GEF but in expecting an entirely finance management oriented institution to
develop a vision necessary to address as entrenched a problem as technology transfer has been.

And it is here that Cancun may also end up failing as badly as all efforts in the preceding two
decades. The Technology Executive Committee (TEC) has been constituted in a manner designed to
act as a mere technical management board with 20 nominated members, selected for their technical
abilities by the developed and developing nation groupings, that will have a half-yearly rotating
leadership among its members and will be required to take decisions by consensus.

This is the pattern of the CDM Executive board and the experience there itself should have
warned that it has little to recommend itself. It is doomed to fail because it lacks what is needed the
most, leadership with a vision and initiative, and an entirely uncommon capacity to walk around the
path littered with minefields as it would discover very soon.

There are broadly two kinds of leadership. One is transactional leadership that seeks to find
solutions for the current challenges and relies on a carrot and stick approach with economically,
legally and culturally acceptable forms of inducement, reward and punishment to cajole
followers towards preset goals. The leader draws a format and his team members are
expected to fill in the details. The leader's productivity depends primarily on his capacity to
lay down a clear path to the objectives, assign tasks suitably to members, monitor progress
and provide help when needed (Politis, 2004, Rowold & Wolff, 2009).

Transformational leadership, on the other hand, works on a long term vision and is able to
make it into a shared vision of all with entirely new expectations from themselves and from their
environment. The leader arouses the followers and creates hitherto unknown capabilities making
them act far beyond the framework, beyond the mere call of duty, beyond self-interest, and in
the process she transforms not only herself, the followers but the task itself into something far more
than originally envisaged (Politis, 2004, Rowold & Wolff, 2009).

The manner in which TEC has been set up, with 20 technical members and a half
yearly rotating leadership among them, is designed to preclude the possibility of appointment,
or emergence, of a transformational leadership in this body. With this body, and assuming its
membership would consist of competent technological experts, one can look forward to a
decade of good work ahead of producing a large number of tools of guidance for assessing
technology transfer needs, rules of transactions and colourful glossaries of technical terms but
little real technological transfer from North to South. It would, ofcourse, marshal enough
evidence of such case-by-case 'transfers' to China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Korea among
a few other technically non-Annex 1 countries. In the hands of people of such competence it
would not be difficult to prove the 'business as usual' as 'additional' establishing its success
as CDM Executive Board has done. But one can be sure there would be no mass technology
transfers to those who really need support for mitigation and adaptation, the vast majority of
the poor and less technologically capable countries of the South.

Problems that have defied solution for decades require leadership of a different nature
altogether. For such a leader technological knowledge would be merely one of the desirable
qualifications and her main attributes will have to be a clear vision, an ability to fashion a
new path to that distant vision, sell the vision and her way to it to the world, fathom the depth
of obstacles on the path and motivate her team to achieve beyond themselves. And she would
need sufficient time, many times longer than the presently prescribed six months, to show
results. For the global community to really invest itself wholeheartedly in enabling the South
to adapt effectively and quickly to the consequences of climate change, and adopt low carbon
paths of development, the first and most important task is to find a leader for the Technology
Executive Committee with proven credentials and give her the mandate, time and the tools.
The experts in the TEC and CTCNs should form her team and she should have a central role
in the formation of these bodies. She should work in consultation with the experts and in a
transparent manner but should not be forced into seeking consensus because that would
restrict transfer benefits to only those technologies that cost the least.

There are many political and business leaders across the world who have transformed their
states, metropolises and businesses beyond recognition against impossible odds using their leadership
skills, the technical and managerial skills of their teams and the trust of the people they served.
Imagine a Bill Gates, an Indira Nooyi, or a Mohammed Yunus given the responsibility of leading
technology transfer. Would not success then be just a given?

Acknowledgement: The author is thankful to Miss Swati Chaliha and Miss Zainab Hassan, Research
Associates in the Institute of Green Economy, New Delhi, for their contributions in writing this
working paper.

UNFCCC. 2010a. The Contribution of the Clean Development Mechanism under the Kyoto Protocol
to Technology Transfer.

UNFCCC. 2010b. Cancun Agreements. Draft decision - CP/16: Outcome of the work of the Ad Hoc
Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention,

About the Author and IGREC

Dr. Promode Kant is Director of the Institute of Green Economy (IGREC), New Delhi, India. As a former member of the Indian Forest Service, he has held various prestigious positions in the Indian government. He specializes in the areas of carbon sequestration, clean development mechanism, environment policy, sustainable management of forests and equity issues in tribal owned forests, economic assessment of ecological and environmental consequences of major developmental works and wildlife management. He has taught as a Visiting Professor at Indira Gandhi National Forest Academy, FRI University, Dehradun, and at the Department of Forestry in the University of Joensuu in Finland. He was designated UNFCCC expert on afforestation/reforestation during 2004-2005. He is a reviewer of many national and international journals and has many publications to his credit.

The IGREC has been set up with the aim of helping evolve a path of economic development that leaves as little negative impacts on the earth and its environment as possible, even as it brings the humanity quickly out of the vicious circle of poverty. Located in the capital city of New Delhi, IGREC has been registered as a Non-profit Society under the Act XXI of 1860 in order to promote research and development of projects and programmes in the field of climate change mitigation & adaptation and it works in close collaboration with international organisations like UNEP, FAO, and ITTO as also with the central and state governments of India.

An Ethical Analysis of the CancunClimate Negotiations Outcome

Donald A. Brown
Associate Professor of Environmental Ethics, Science, and Law
Pennsylvania State University

Two dramatically conflicting headlines about the outcome of the recently concluded Cancun United Nations Framework Convention On Climate Change's 16th Conference of the Parties are initially defensible. One might be: Some Developed Nations Tragically Fail to Make Meaningful Commitments on Climate Change for the Twentieth Year In A Row As Scientists Tell The World That We are Running Out Of Time to Prevent Dangerous Climate Change. Another might be: Cancun Surprises Many By Keeping Hope Alive for A Global Climate Change Deal.

This post looks at these conflicting conclusions about Cancun through an ethical lens. This post will explain that although some hope for a global solution to climate change is still alive due to decisions adopted in Cancun, one must see Cancun in the context of a twenty-year failed attempt to prevent dangerous climate change and from that standpoint Cancun must be seen as another troubling ethical failure of those most responsible for climate change. Twenty years of failure to achieve a global solution to climate change is a tragedy because each year when there has been a failure to commit to adequately reduce greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions has made it more difficult in subsequent years to get on a ghg emissions reduction pathway capable of preventing serious climate change.

For some, the modest progress in Cancun toward a global approach to climate change has been seen as a positive step forward. (BBC, 2010). This is so because many thought that the UNFCCC architecture for a global solution to climate change was in jeopardy of completely unraveling before Cancun; a legal structure that had been gradually been put into place since 1990 when negotiations on a global solution to climate change began. Yet, this post will argue that Cancun must be seen in the context of what has failed to happen in the last twenty years on climate change and not only on the basis of the very limited positive steps made in Cancun.

To many others, Cancun was another tragic lost opportunity for the international community to prevent dangerous climate change as well as a the most recent in a series of moral failures of those most responsible for climate change to commit to steps necessary to protect those who are most vulnerable to climate change's harshest impacts. One observer of Cancun concluded, for instance, that:

The Cancun Agreements of the 2010 UN Climate Summit do not represent a success for multilateralism; neither do they put the world on a safe climate pathway that science demands, and far less to a just and equitable transition towards a sustainable model of development. They represent a victory for big polluters and Northern elites that wish to continue with business-as-usual. (IBON, 2010)

We must see climate change is an ethical problem because: (a) it is a problem caused by some people in one part of the world that puts others and the natural resources on which they depend at great risk, (b) the harms to these other people are not mere inconveniences but in some cases catastrophic losses of life or the ability to sustain life, and (c) those who are vulnerable to climate change cant petition their governments to act to protect themselves but must rely upon a hope that a sense of justice and responsibility of those causing the problem will motivate them to change their behavior. Because climate change raises civilization challenging ethical questions, any proposed climate change regime must be examined through an ethical lens.

This post reviews the Cancun outcome through an ethical lens in light of the overall responsibility of those nations who are exceeding their fair share of safe global emissions in regard to their duties: (a) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to levels necessary to prevent harm to others, (b) to reduce greenhouse gas emission to levels consistent with what is each nation's fair share of total global emissions, and (c) to provide financing for adaptation measures and other necessary responses to climate change harms for those who are most vulnerable and least responsible for climate change.

To understand the significance of what happened in Cancun, it is necessary to briefly review the history of international negotiations leading up to Cancun. That is, it is not sufficient to simply examine what happened in Cancun without seeing Cancun in the context of the twenty-year negotiating history that had as its goal the prevention of dangerous climate change and the harms that each year of delay in agreeing to a global deal exacerbate.

II. The Path To The Cancun Agreement.

The Cancun conference took place from November 29 to December 10, 2010. The Cancun goals were modest in light of the failure of COP-15 in Copenhagen the year before to achieve an expected global solution to climate change. Copenhagen was expected to produce a global solution to climate change pursuant to a two-year negotiating process and agenda that was agreed to in Bali, Indonesia, in December 2007.

To understand the ethical significance of the Cancun, it is necessary to review the twenty-year history of climate change negotiations that led to Bali, Copenhagen, and Cancun. This history constitutes a failed attempt over two decades to adopt a global solution to climate change.

Negotiations on a global climate change deal began in 1990 that led in 1992 to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). (Bodansky,2001) The climate change negotiation process began in December 1990, when the UN General Assembly established the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for a Framework Convention on Climate Change, to negotiate a convention containing "appropriate commitments" in time for signature in June 1992 at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro. Because of the opposition of the United States and a f ew other countrified, this treaty itself did not contain binding greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions limitations for countries but nevertheless included numerous other binding national obligations. Among other things, for instance, the parties to the UNFCCC agreed that:

(a) They would adopt policies and measures to prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system;
(b) Developed countries should take the first steps to prevent dangerous climate change;
(c) Nations have common but differentiated responsibilities to prevent climate change;
(d) Nations may not use scientific uncertainty as an excuse for not taking action; and,
(e) Nations should reduce their ghg emissions based upon "equity." (UN, 1992)

In the early UNFCCC negotiations, the European Union and Association of Small Island States (AOSIS) advocated establishing a target and timetable to limit emissions by developed countries in the UNFCCC, while the United States and the oil-producing states opposed this idea. (Bodanksy, 2001). Other developing states generally supported targets and timetables, as long as it was clearly understood that these targets and timetables would apply only to developed states. (Bodanksy, 2001)

The UNFCCC has 192 parties, a number that includes almost all countries in the world including the United States which ratified the UNFCCC in 1993.

The UNFCC is a "framework" convention because it has always been expected that additional requirements would be added to the initial framework in updates that are known as "protocols" or in annual decisions of the conferences of the parties (COPs).

Each year as the parties to the UNFCCC meet in COPs , decisions were made that affect the responsibilities of the parties. The UNFCCC COPs were as follows:

Each year nations have meet in COPs to achieve a global solution to climate change and each COP for the most part continued to add small steps toward the goals of the UNFCCC. Yet in all COPs some nations have resisted calls from some of the most vulnerable nations to adopt a solution to climate change that would prevent dangerous climate change.

As the international community approached Cancun, no comprehensive global solution had been agreed to despite the fact that the original negotiations on the UNFCCC began in 1990 with a goal of achieving a global climate change solution. For this reason, Cancun must be understood as the latest attempt in a twenty year history of mostly failed attempts to structure a global solution to climate change.

The first major addition to the UNFCCC was the Kyoto Protocol which was negotiated in 1997 because the international community had been convinced by then by the emerging climate change science that developed nations needed to be bound by numerical emissions reductions targets. The Kyoto Protocol entered into force on February 16, 2005 and currently has 190 parties. The United States is the only developed country that never ratified the Kyoto Protocol.

Going into the Kyoto negotiations. the European Union proposed a comparatively strong
target, requiring a 15 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions below 1990 levels by the year 2010, while other industrialized states such as the United States and Australia proposed weaker targets, with Japan somewhere in the middle. (Bodansky, 2001) Ultimately the issue was resolved by specifying different emission targets for each party, ranging from an 8 percent reduction from 1990 levels for the European Union, to a 10 percent increase for Iceland. (Bodansky, 2001)

Under the Kyoto, Protocol, the developed countries agreed to reduce their overall emissions of six greenhouse gases by an average of 5.2% below 1990 levels between 2008-2012. The developing countries had no binding emissions reductions obligations under Kyoto.

The Copenhagen negotiations in 2009 were necessary not only to expand the modest commitments made in the Kyoto Protocol but also because the emissions reductions obligations of developed countries set out in the Kyoto Protocol expire in 2012.

Kyoto was never understood as the final solution to climate change but only as a small initial step of developed nations to begin to take responsibility for climate change. As we have seen, the developed nations had agreed in the UNFCCC that they should take the lead in reducing the threat of climate change because they were mostly responsible for the build up of ghg in the atmosphere and Kyoto was understood to be a modest initial step toward a global solution. That is, Kyoto negotiators understood that a global solution would be negotiated later in future meetings of the UNFCCC parties. From the standpoint of some the most vulnerable countries,including some of the small island developing states making up the organization AOSIS, Kyoto was not aggressive enough to prevent climate change threats to them.

At climate negotiations at COP-13 in Bali, Indonesia in 2007, parties to the UNFCCC agreed to replace the Kyoto Protocol with an agreement that would create a second commitment period under the UNFCCC and would include binding emissions reductions for developed countries and new programs on adaptation for developing countries, deforestation, finance, technology transfer, and capacity building. This agreement was referred to as the Bali Roadmap which also called for articulating a "shared vision for long-term cooperative action," including a long-term global goal for emission reductions. The original UNFCCC climate treaty had no quantified temperature limitation goal nor ghg concentration atmospheric stabilization goal and in the Bali Roadmap the international community agreed to work on such a goal.

The Bali decision also recognized that developing countries could make contributions to solving the climate change through the development of Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs), that is climate change strategies for developing countries. The NAMAs, however, would not constitute binding emissions reduction requirements for developing countries in contrast to the binding obligations of developed countries in the Kyoto Protocol that would be further developed and extended in Copenhagen.

Although some progress was made on a few issues in the two year lead-up to Copenhagen, little progress was made on the major issues needed to define a global solution for climate change and particularly on legal commitments for GHG emissions reductions and funding for adaptation, deforestation programs, and technology transfer.

As Copenhagen approached, optimism about a Copenhagen deal faded although there was a short spurt of renewed hope several weeks before the conference started in December 2009 as the US, China, and a few other nations publicly made non-binding commitments on emissions reductions.

During the Copenhagen conference representatives from poor vulnerable nations begged developed countries to: (a) commit to reduce GHG emissions to levels necessary to prevent dangerous climate change. and (b) to fund adaptation programs in developing countries that are necessary to protect the most vulnerable from climate change impacts that could be avoided or compensate for the damages that could not be avoided.

Despite these pleas, not much happened during the Copenhagen conference to resolve the most contentious issues until US President Obama appeared on the morning of the last day, Friday, December 18, 2009. For much of that day, President Obama negotiated with Chinese premier Wen Jiabao, Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and South African President Jacob Zuma.(Lerer, 2009) Yet, a large part of this time was focused on a dispute between the United States and China on whether China would agree to monitoring and verification of Chinese climate change commitments.

President Obama could not commit to anything in Copenhagen that he could not get through the US congress. Because a climate change bill that had passed the US House was very weak compared to what science says was necessary to protect the world's poorest people, the United States took a position in the lead-up to Copenhagen that continued to be the weakest of all the developed countries's commitments on emissions reductions. The US could only commit to a 13% reduction below 2005, a 4% reduction below 1990 levels. Yet most scientists were asserting that the world need to reduce ghg emissions by 25% to 40% reductions below 1990 levels to have any confidence that the international community would limit warming to 20 C, a level which was widely believed to trigger dangerous climate change.

Because none of the developed countries were willing to make emissions reduction commitments congruent with what science was saying was necessary to protect them, some of the most vulnerable developing countries saw the developed countries' positions in Copenhagen as ominous, perhaps a death sentence.

President Obama personally negotiated the Copenhagen Accord during last hours of the conference. Yet, to get this deal, President Obama had to ignore many of the positions of the most vulnerable nations that were unresolved in the two negotiating documents that had been created in the lead-up to Copenhagen over two years. That is, for instance, among other things, the Copenhagen Accord failed to get commitments from the United States and some other developed countries to reduce ghg emissions at levels necessary to prevent serious climate change damage.

President Obama managed to get fairly wide spread support for the Copenhagen Accord on the last day of the Copenhagen negotiations despite the fact that the United States was not able to commit to emissions reductions at levels to prevent dangerous climate change. Politically President Obama's hands were tied in regard to his ability to commit to issues of interest to those nations most vulnerable to climate change because of domestic political constraints. Before Copenhagen, the US House of Representatives had passed a bill requiring a 17 percent reduction below 2005 levels by 2020 and this was a practical limitation on what the United States could commit to in international negotiations.

For domestic political reasons, the US President also wanted agreement from China and other large developing countries on transparent procedures for verifying their non-binding emissions reduction commitments.

Those opposing climate change legislation in the United States often have argued that it would be unfair to the United States if it was bound to reduce GHG emissions and China was not required to do the same. In fact, a decade earlier, when the Kyoto Accord was under consideration in the United States, opponents of the Kyoto deal frequently ran TV commercials that argued that the Kyoto Protocol was unfair to the United States because China was excluded from emissions limitations. This argument was often made without e critical comment in the United States even though the United States had committed itself to take the first steps to reduce emissions along with other developed countries under the UNFCCC.

Although President Obama originally negotiated the Copenhagen Accord with just four other countries, in the last few hours of the Copenhagen conference the United States successfully convinced most large emitting countries to support the Accord.

The Copenhagen Accords' most significant elements are:

 Long-Term Goals: The parties agreed that deep cuts in global emissions are required according to science and as documented by the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, with a view to reducing global emissions in order to limit the increase in global temperature to below 2°C. The Accord also calls for an assessment of the implementation of the Accord to be completed by 2015 including examining whether the long-term goal should be a temperature rise of 1.5°C.

 Adaptation: The Copenhagen Accord states that adaptation to the adverse effects of climate change and the potential impacts of response measures is a challenge faced by all countries, and that enhanced action and international cooperation on adaptation are urgently required in developing countries, especially in the least developed countries, the small island states, and Africa. The parties to the Accord also agree that developed countries shall provide adequate, predictable and sustainable financial resources, technology and capacity building to support adaptation.

 Financing For Poor Nations: The Copenhagen Accord provides that developed countries shall set a goal of mobilizing jointly $100 billion a year by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries and that the funds will come from a wide variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral. An annex carries the following short-term financing pledges from developed countries for 2010-2012: EU - $10.6 billion. Japan - $11 billion. United States - $3.6 billion

 Emissions Reductions: The Copenhagen Accord provides for countries to voluntarily commit to GHG mitigation plans in two separate annexes, one for developed country targets and the other for the voluntary pledges of major developing countries. The developing countries may identify voluntary commitments. Neither developed nor developing country commitments under the Accord are legally binding.

 Verification of Climate Change Promises. A sticking point for a deal, largely because China refused to accept international controls, the Copenhagen Accord provides that emerging economies must monitor their efforts and report the results to the United Nations every two years, with some international checks to meet Western transparency concerns but "to ensure that national sovereignty is respected."

 Forest Protection. The Copenhagen Accord "recognizes the importance of reducing emission from deforestation and forest degradation and the need to enhance removals or greenhouse gas emission by forests," and agrees to provide "positive incentives" to fund such action with financial resources from the developed world.

For many the Copenhagen Accord was seen as a tragic failure because it failed to: (a) achieve once again enforceable ghg emissions reduction commitments from developed countries sufficient to prevent dangerous climate change, (b) identify dedicated sources of funding for adaptation or capacity building in vulnerable developing countries, or (c) stop the deforestation that is a major contributor to climate change.

Others saw Copenhagen as a success for achieving agreement on the long-term goals of the UNFCCC, new voluntary commitments from many developing countries, new levels of cooperation from China on verifying its voluntary emissions reductions commitments, and promises to mobilize significant amounts of money for adaptation in developing countries.

Yet, there was widespread agreement that the Copenhagen Accord did not constitute a comprehensive global solution to climate change particularly on binding emissions reduction commitments and funding for adaptation and preventing deforestation. At best Copenhagen had made a few positive steps foreword but deferred many of the toughest issues to Cancun and beyond.

Following Copenhagen, forty-two industrialized countries submitted quantified economy-wide emission targets for 2020. In addition, forty-three developing countries submitted nationally appropriate mitigation actions. (UNEP, 2010) These pledges have since become the basis for analyzing the extent to which the global community is on track to meet long-term temperature goals as outlined in the Copenhagen Accord of 2°C.

The United Nations Environment program issued a report before Cancun analyzing whether the emissions reductions commitments submitted pursuant to the Copenhagen Accord would achieve the 2°C. (UNEP, 2010) UNEP concluded that if the highest ambitions of all countries associated with the Copenhagen Accord are implemented and supported, annual emissions of greenhouse gases could be cut, on average, by around 7 gigatons (Gt) of CO2 equivalent by 2020. (UNEP, 2010)

Without this action, it is likely that a business-as-usual scenario would see emissions rise to an average of around 56 Gt of CO2 equivalent by around 2020. Cuts in annual emissions to around 49 Gt of CO2 equivalent would still however leave a gap of around 5 Gt compared with where we need to be--a gap equal to the total emissions of the world's cars, buses and trucks in 2005. (UNEP, 2010) That is because the experts estimate that emissions need to be around 44 Gt of CO2 equivalent by 2020 to have a likely chance of pegging temperatures to 2° C or less. (UNEP, 2010), However, if only the lowest ambition pledges are implemented, and if no clear rules are set in the negotiations, emissions could be around 53 Gt of CO2 equivalent in 2020--not that different from business as usual. (UNEP, 2010).

All of this set the stage for the Cancun negotiations and its agenda which was less ambitious than the Copenhagen agenda because most observers believed it would not be possible in Cancun to obtain the binding commitments on ghg reductions, dedicated funding for developing countries for capacity building and adaptation, and funding for forest protection identified in the Bali agreement in 2007. For these reasons, expectations for Cancun were very modest compared to hopes for Copenhagen the year before. In addition, many international climate change negotiation observers lost hope for increased commitments on ghg emissions reductions from the United States when conservatives won US elections in November of 2010, a month before the opening of the Cancun meeting. .

III The Cancun Agreements

COP-16 concluded in the early hours of December 11, 2010 at Moon Palace near Cancun Mexico with a few modest agreements on steps needed to structure a global approach to solving climate change. Among other things, negotiators agreed to:
A. Emissions Reductions Commitments of Developed and Developing Countries.

The Cancun agreements made no changes to the magnitude of the voluntary emissions reductions commitments made pursuant to the Copenhagen Accord either for developed or developing countries. However, developed countries are urged under the Cancun agreements to increase the ambition of their targets "to a level consistent with" the latest recommendations of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In addition, developed countries are urged to prepare "low-carbon development strategies or plans," and encourages developing countries to do so as well but the Cacncun agreements establishno process to further define them.

Under the Cancun agreements developing countries agreed to take "Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs), supported by technology and finance, "aimed at achieving a deviation in emissions relative to 'business as usual' emissions in 2020. The Cancun agreements also call for workshops to clarify the assumptions behind countries' mitigation pledges and, in the case of developed countries, to consider ways to increase their level of ambition. It also establishes a two-part "registry." In the first part, intended to facilitate matching of developing country actions with support, developing countries can list proposed actions in need of support, and developed countries can list support available or provided. The second part will record all developing country NAMAs -whether supported or unsupported.

The Cancun agreements extended negotiations designed to ensure that there is no gap between the first and second commitment periods under the UNFCCC until the next COP in Durban South Africa. In this way, the Cancun agreements keep hope alive that the UNCCC goal of achieving legally binding emissions reduction targets will be achieved in future negotiations although it establishes no legally-binding emissions reduction commitments.

As we have seen, each year the tough issues have been postponed, the stronger national commitments must be to prevent dangerous climate change. When climate change negotiations began in 1990, the CO2 atmospheric concentration was approximately 350 ppm but as the international community concluded the Cancun meeting, CO2 atmospheric concentrations were almost 390 ppm. Each year of waiting has made the achievement of a safe atmospheric ghg concentration stabilization goals more difficult.

B. Long-Term Goal Of UNFCCC On A Warming Limit.

Like the Copenhagen Accord, the Cancun agreements set a goal of limiting average global warming to below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and call for periodic review to consider strengthening this long-term goal, including to 1.5 degrees. The first review is to begin in 2013 and conclude by 2015. At COP 17 in Durban South Africa, the parties will again consider setting a time-frame for the peaking of global emissions and a global emissions goal for 2050. Like Copenhagen, the Cancun agreements set no ghg atmospheric stabilization goal.

C. Measurement, Reporting and Verification (MRV) Under the UNFCCC

To strengthen the measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) of mitigation actions and support for developing countries, the Cancun agreements call for:

 More detailed reporting, in the national communications of both developed and developing countries, of mitigation actions and support provided or received;

 In the case of developing countries, guidelines for international MRV of mitigation actions receiving international support, and "general" guidelines for domestic MRV of autonomous actions; and

 New biennial reports by developed countries on their progress in reducing emissions and support provided; and by developing countries on their greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories, mitigation actions, needs and support received. (Developed countries already submit annual GHG inventories.)

In addition, the Cancun agreements establish a new processes within the Subsidiary Body on Implementation (SBI) to consider parties' mitigation efforts - called "international assessments" for developed countries, and "international consultations and analysis," a phrase from the Copenhagen Accord, for developing countries. In the latter case, the decision specifies that the process: be "non-intrusive, non-punitive, and respectful of national sovereignty;" focus on unsupported actions; not consider the "appropriateness" of a country's domestic policies; include an analysis by technical experts; and result in a summary report.

D. Finance for Developing Countries for Their Obligations Under the UNFCCC

The Cancun agreements incorporate the finance goals set out in the Copenhagen Accord - a collective commitment by developed countries to provide $30 billion in fast-start finance for developing countries in 2010-12; and to mobilize $100 billion a year in public and private finance by 2020 "in the context of meaningful mitigation actions and transparency on implementation." As in Copenhagen, no dedicated sources of funding were identified outside some non-binding pledges made by some countries.

The Cancun agreements establish a Green Climate Fund operating under the "guidance" of, and accountable to, the Conference of the Parties (COP). The fund is to be governed by a 24-member board with equal representation from developed and developing countries, and supported by an independent secretariat. The World Bank was designated as its interim trustee, subject to a review three years after the fund begins operations. The design of the fund was delegated to a 40-member Transitional Committee (15 members from developed countries, and 25 from developing), which will be convened initially by the UNFCCC secretariat and is to submit its recommendations at COP 17.

E. Adaptation

The Cancun agreements establish the Cancϊn Adaptation Framework to enhance adaptation efforts by all countries; a process to help least developed countries (LDCs) to develop and implement national adaptation plans; and an Adaptation Committee to provide technical support to parties, facilitate sharing of information and best practices, and advise the COP on adaptation-related matters. The Cancun agreements require that a the SBI committee referenced above make recommendations on the composition and functions of the Adaptation Committee, for adoption at COP 17.

The Cancun agreements also establish a work program to consider "approaches to address loss and damage associated with climate change in ... particularly vulnerable" developing countries, including a climate insurance facility and other options for risk-sharing, with recommendations due at COP 18.

The Cancun agreements outline a phased approach to strengthening efforts by developing countries to reduce emissions from deforestation and other forestry-related activities, starting with the development of national strategies and "evolving into results-based actions that should be fully measured, reported, and verified."

The Cancun agreements call on developing countries planning to undertake such efforts to develop: a national strategy or action plan; a national forest or forest emission reference level; and a transparent national system for monitoring and reporting of conservation and emission-reduction efforts. Countries also are to follow safeguards ensuring, for instance, the full participation of indigenous peoples, local communities and other stakeholders.

The Cancun agreements were unable to resolve related REDD finance issues - in particular, any role for market-based finance. The Cancun agreements called for nations to make financing recommendations on REDD financing at COP 17 in Durbin.

G. Technology Development and Transfer

The Cancun agreements establish a Technology Mechanism comprised of a Technology Executive Committee and a Climate Technology Centre and Network. The 20-member Committee will be comprised of experts nominated by parties and appointed by the COP. Its roles will include assessing technological needs and issues; recommending actions to promote technology development and transfer; and promoting collaboration among governments, the private sector and others.

IV. Ethical Analysis of Cancun Accord

In examining previous COPs, ClimateEthics has proposed ethical criteria that any proposed post-Kyoto regime must meet at a minimum. (Brown, 2009a) That is any post-Kyoto regime must:

 Require sufficient greenhouse emissions reductions to assure that the international community is on a greenhouse gas emissions reduction pathway that will prevent dangerous climate change harm. This is sometimes referred to as the environmental sufficiency criteria.

 Begin to base differences among national allocations on the basis of equity and justice. This is sometimes referred to as the equity criteria.

 Assure that those responsible for climate change provide adequate, predictable adaptation funding to enable developing countries and in particular the most vulnerable developing countries to do what is necessary to avoid climate change damages in cases where it is possible to take action and to prevent damages, or be compensated for climate change damages in cases where it is impossible to take protective action. We will refer to this as the just adaptation criteria.

Although these three criteria, that is environmental sufficiency, equity, and just adaptation constitute the minimum ethical considerations that any climate regime must satisfy, they don't capture all ethical questions raised by any proposed climate change regime. There are numerous other ethical questions raised by any proposed climate change regimes that go beyond these minimum requirements including issues of fair process, gender issues in policy formation, obligations of sub-national governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals for climate change, human rights issues relating to climate change and many more. This post, however, will evaluate Cancun agreements in light of the three minimum criteria.

A. Environmental Sufficiency Criteria

As we have seen the Cancun agreements fail to modify the inadequate voluntary commitments on ghg emissions reductions made pursuant to the Copenhagen Accord. Not only does the Cancun agreements fail to require sufficient ghg emissions reductions to assure that the international community is on a ghg emissions reduction pathway that will prevent dangerous climate change, the emissions reductions commitments that have been identified under the Cancun agreements almost guarantee that millions of poor people, plants, animals, an ecosystems will be harmed by climate change. As we have seen above, the commitments made according to the Copenhagen Accord and Cancun agreements that have been ratified by the Cancun agreements leave at the very minimum a 5Gt gap between emissions levels that will be achieved if there is full compliance with the voluntary emissions reductions and what is necessary to prevent 2°C rise, a warming amount that most scientists believe could cause very dangerous climate change.

In fact, a report issued by the Royal Society shortly before the Cancun meeting started in late November concluded that there is now little to no chance of maintaining the rise in global surface temperature below 2°C, despite repeated high-level statements to the contrary. (Anderson and Bows, 2010) That is, although it is still possible that nations in the next few years will revise upward their ghg emissions reductions commitments to levels that will protect the most vulnerable people and countries, the most recent science has concluded that the world is running out of time to do this. And so, those most responsible for climate change have failed under the Cancun agreements to assume responsibility to prevent dangerous climate change- extending a twenty year record of failure in so doing.

As we have seen, the Cancun agreements adopt the Copenhagen Accord target that nations should work together to limit human caused additional heating to 2°C. There are, however, several ethical problems with this target. They include the following:

 Any additional warming from current levels is ethically problematic because current temperatures are already dangerous for some vulnerable people around the world and an additional 1 °C temperature rise is already locked in by prior emissions. Because any additional warming from current levels could have serious consequences to those most vulnerable to climate change, those who are most vulnerable should have as a matter of procedural justice rights to consent to put at risk by the additional 2°C goal adopted in the Accord.

 There is substantial scientific evidence that even the 1.5 °C temperature limit would not be sufficient to protect those most vulnerable to climate change. For instance, a recent paper by Jim Hansen and seven other authors concluded that additional warming should be limited to 1°C warming and to do this existing atmospheric concentrations of CO2 must not only not be allowed to rise the small amount to 450 ppm of carbon equivalent but must be reduced from existing levels of 385 ppm to 350 ppm CO2. (Hansen et al 2008) According to this paper, the world has likely already shot past the level of atmospheric concentrations that will lead to dangerous climate change for many. Under this view, the world has already used up all of the assimilative capacity of the atmosphere and biosphere that has been available to buffer against dangerous climate change. Given this, a strong ethical argument can be made that all nations have a duty to try to prevent additional warming of almost any amount, while the Cancun agreements legitimize an additional 2°C warming. Given that the Cancun agreement can also be understood to legitimize any national ghg emissions target that is proposed voluntarily, even if it is insufficient to achieve the 2°C temperature limit goal adopted by the Accord, let alone the duty to try and prevent any additional warming, the Cancun agreements can be seen as ethically problematic. Given that a case can be made that current levels atmospheric ghg concentrations are already harming or putting people and ecosystems at risk, it is difficult to make an ethically acceptable case that atmospheric ghg concentration targets higher than current levels are justified unless consent is given by those who are already being harmed by warming or full compensation is made to those who through no fault of their own are harmed by climate change. Yet the Cancun agreements assume that an additional 2°C warming backed by commitments that will not limit additional warming are acceptable.

We have also seen that the United States approached negotiations in Cancun as if the United States need not make emissions reductions commitments unless it could secure commitments to reduce GHG emissions from high-emitting developing countries including China. Yet, as we have demonstrated in ClimateEthics before, no nation may deny its duty to reduce its emissions to its fair share of safe global emissions on the basis that others who are contributing to the harm have failed to cease harmful behavior. (Brown, 2009b) This is so because no nation or person has a right to continue destructive behavior on the basis that others who are contributing to the harm have not ceased their destructive behavior.

And so, if some nations are not willing to reduce their emissions to levels consistent with what justice requires of them, no nation, including the United States, can refuse to reduce its emissions to its fair share of safe global emissions levels on the basis that others won't act.

Although the United States is well within its rights to obtain promises of other nations to contribute to solving the climate change problem, it may not as a matter of ethics condition its willingness to reduce its emissions to levels required by justice of it on other nations' behavior. That is, although it may be in everyone's interest if the United States encourages others to make ghg emissions reductions commitments, the United States may not refuse to reduce its emissions to its fair share of safe global emissions on the basis that others have not acted. The United States could ethically link non-obligatory climate change actions on other's participation in climate change solutions but must agree to do what ethics requires of it in reducing emissions without regard to the actions of others.

Because almost twenty percent of global emissions are coming from deforestation, finding ways to limit deforestation such as through REDD is a necessary element in the global deal to reduce ghg emissions to acceptable levels. Although some progress on REDD was made in Cancun, many of the difficult decisions on deforestation have been deferred to COP-17 in Durban and beyond particularly on financing. Yet there are many important ethical questions that go beyond this post raised by the REDD architecture but which will be faced in Durban next year.

Therefore, from the standpoint of the environmental sufficiency goal, the Cancun agreements fail to satisfy the requirement that any post-Kyoto regime must assure that the international community is on a ghg emissions reduction pathway that will prevent dangerous climate change harms.

B. Equity Criteria

The second minimum ethical criteria that all post-Kyoto proposals must meet is the requirement that national emissions reduction proposals must be consistent with what "equity" and "justice" demands of nations. That is, equity requires that each nation reduce its emissions to its fair share of safe global emissions. And so, each nation's emissions reduction levels should be based upon what distributive and retributive justice demands, not on national self-interest. Although there are different theories of distributive justice that lead to different national allocations, many justifications for national ghg emissions allocations fail to satisfy any ethical scrutiny. In other words, it is not necessary to know what perfect justice requires to conclude that some voluntary proposals for national ghg allocations under Copenhagen and Cancun are unjust. One such common approach to national ghg emissions reductions commitments that fails to satisfy any ethical scrutiny is the claim that all nations must reduce emissions by the same amount without regard to whether a nation is a large or small contributor to the climate change problem, an approach often referred to as 'grandfathering' or equal reductions from existing emissions levels. It would appear that some of the national commitments that are referenced in the Cancun agreements are based upon grandfathering emissions reductions from existing levels not on what justice requires of nations.

Since most nations entered the Copenhagen and Cancun negotiations as if national interest rather than global responsibility to others was an adequate basis for national climate change policies, the commitments made under the Copenhagen Accord and Cancun agreements fail to satisfy equity criteria. In fact, in the lead-up to Copenhagen, most of the justifications for national commitments that had been announced by countries to reduce their emissions were exclusively focused on whether they met global goals to reduce GHG emissions unadjusted by equity considerations.

There have been several proposals discussed by the international community about second commitment period frameworks that would expressly incorporate equity into future ghg emissions reductions pathways. Two such frameworks are known as "Contraction and Convergence" (C&C, 2009) and "Greenhouse Development Rights" (GDR) (Bear and Athanasiou, 2009) frameworks. In the lead-up to Copenhagen, all major GHG emitting nations ignored the C&C or GDR frameworks or any other comprehensive framework that took equity into account. In fact, the Copenhagen Accord and the Cancun agreements allowed each nation to identify its emissions reduction commitment based upon voluntary national considerations without regard to equity.

Therefore, the Cancun agreements are a failure in satisfying the equity criteria.

C. Just Adaptation Criteria

The third minimum ethical criteria for judging any second commitment period under the UNFCCC is that it must provide adequate funding to support adaptation programs in developing countries given that some developing countries have done nothing to cause climate change and must take steps to avoid harsh impacts.

The Cancun agreement did manage to create an adaptation framework to enhance adaptation efforts by all countries; a process to help least developed countries (LDCs) to develop and implement national adaptation. Yet Cancun failed to identify dedicated sources of funding to implement an adaptation agenda that is based upon "mandatory" contributions to "new, predictable, and additional sources of funding." Although progress was made on adaptation in Cancun, the Cancun agreements defer many of the tougher issues to COP-17 and beyond particularly on funding issues. Therefore the Cancun agreements fail to satisfy the ethical criteria for adequate funding for adaptation.

V. Conclusions-Climate Change Ethics after Copenhagen.

We would agree that some issues agreed to in Cancun fill in some of the missing architecture needed for a global solution to climate change. In addition, the Cancun agreements correct a few significant limitations of the Copenhagen Accords and in accomplishing this the Cancun decisions keep hope alive for a legally binding international climate change regime.

Yet, declaring Cancun a success without viewing Cancun's limitations in the context of the increasingly difficult challenges entailed by further delay on a global climate change solution is to invite serious misjudgment about the nature of hope that can be justified by Cancun. From the standpoint of the twenty-year negotiations, Cancun was another failed attempt to forge a global solution to climate change, a failure that must be understood as an ethical failure of the those nations most responsible for climate change.

The Cancun agreements are ethically problematic for reasons stated in this post among other reasons. In summary, the commitments made by nations under the Cancun agreements are not environmentally sufficient, distributively just, nor provide for just adaptation responses for vulnerable developing countries.

The next climate change negotiations will take place in Durban South Africa late in 2011. Although it is possible that developed nations will take more ethically responsible positions on an urgently needed global climate change solution, the world is running out of time to do this according to the consensus scientific view. The longer the world waits to reduce its ghg emissions, the more expensive will be the adaptation agenda and the steeper emissions reductions commitments will be needed to protect vulnerable developing countries and poor people around the world. Each failure to develop a global solution to a climate change regime will make it more difficult to forge a just climate change regime.

From the standpoint of ethics, Cancun was another failure of those responsible for causing climate change to agree to do what ethics and justice require of them.

Donald A. Brown is Associate Professor of Environmental Ethics, Science, and Law at Penn State University where he is currently teaching interdisciplinary courses on climate change and sustainable development and acting as Program Director of the Collaborative Program on the Ethical Dimensions of Climate Change whose secretariat is the Rock Ethics Institute at Penn State. Mr. Brown is also director of the Pennsylvania Environmental Research Consortium, an organization comprised of 56 Pennsylvania universities and the Pennsylvania Departments of Environmental Protection and Conservation and Natural Resources. Before holding these positions he was an environmental lawyer for the states of Pennsylvania and New Jersey and Program Manager for United Nations Organizations at the United States Environmental Protection Agencys Office of International Environmental Policy. In this position he represented the United States Environmental Protection Agency on United States delegations to the United Nations negotiating climate change, biodiversity, and sustainable development issues. Mr. Brown has written about and lectured extensively on climate change issues over the last 20 years. He has lectured on climate change issues at 30 universities in eight countries and lectured on sustainability issues in 23 countries. His interest has been the need to integrate environmental science, economic, and law in environmental policy making. His latest book is American Heat: Ethical Problems with the U.S. Response to Global Warming.